Key Issues

Increase access to childcare assistance for parents who are pursuing a college degree.

Broman’s proposal provides parents childcare assistance at the 85th percentile for three years if: the parent is pursuing a select degree at a community college, a trade, or a graduate degree, and working not less than 20 hours per week and not more than 40 hours per week. An additional two years would be available for parents if needed at half of full assistance.

The cost is approximately $44,000 per child

The reasoning is that a parent who has an unplanned pregnancy, even when married, may find cost of childcare prevents the parent from pursuing education opportunities that would be a vehicle for economic mobility.

Establish an Education Technology Infrastructure Standard for school districts across the state of Michigan.

Broman’s proposal establishes a standard for education technology infrastructure for all districts statewide. Leveraging economies of scale, the state can provide districts with a forecast of infrastructure advancements. The proposal focuses on infrastructure to allow individual districts to retain local control over what devices are in the classroom.

The reasoning is that too often schools are using debt to finance both devices AND infrastructure. Devices and apps change far too often to plan for, while infrastructure is used for 5-10 years without major upgrade making it easier to plan for.

Establish a standard for university response to sexual assault on college campuses based on the Campus Accountability and Safety Act of 2015 as introduced in the US Senate.

Parents should have confidence that the response to sexual assault on campus will be the same regardless of the university their child attends. Standardization through statute creates an enforcement mechanism to hold universities accountable and utilize experts to ensure the best policies are in place across Michigan.

Fully fund the investigators and prosecutors needed to bring offenders to justice from the previously untested rape kits in Detroit.

There were untested rape kits found in Detroit warehouses, money has been guaranteed to fund the testing. After testing comes investigating, and prosecuting the offenders. The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office is significantly short staffed with these added cases. It is important to bring these offenders to justice quickly.

Bring innovation and research and development centered businesses and jobs closer to Detroit’s neighborhoods.

Research and development and engineering jobs are needed close to Detroit’s neighborhoods to give students an opportunity to experience these professions. “You can’t be what you can’t see,” leaving many black and African-American students without knowledge of what type of work engineers and scientists do.

Of students pursuing a degree in engineering, less than 6% are black or African-American. These degrees pay nearly $80,000/year. Of students pursuing social work, or human services degrees, nearly 20% are black or African-American. These degrees pay nearly $40,000/year.

Create the Detroit Policy Research Initiative.

DPRI is a program where top researchers and PhD students from around the country converge on Detroit to solve some of the most complex problems in the city. DPRI participants get data and material to publish a paper, in exchange Michigan gets well researched legislation with data to back it up. The commitment from William Broman is to use the official capacity of State Representative to assist researchers in obtaining the requested data, as well as push the legislation to a final vote on the House floor.

The reason for this program is to avoid unintended consequences that can be caused by legislation with too many outside/special interest influences, while solving some of Detroit’s toughest challenges.